title, description and keywords were already included in the old version. as well as auto-generation in case a user didn't set them manually (generated from the excerpt I think and the tags) - same stuff inside the new box? :wink:

besides, will the new version "import" the data if someone actually used the old version to set his own keywords/description?

the new version seems to have some kind of wizard, does taht need to run for every site or once only by the siteadmin?

I'm going through the same process (re-scrubbing SEO in our network) and have similar questions in light of the newer vs. older option (AIO SEO + simple sitemap). From the research I've done in a few places the following observations jump out:

2) This thread seems to paint a different picture than I got from other threads - that suggests there's no configuration necessary for the new SEO plugin. It can be configured, but default settings should work out of the box like the other one on all sites in multisite. Clarification? (this will help me and might help @Ovidiu)

3) This thread seemed to imply that WPMU DEV SEO will import / use previous settings setup by All in One SEO + simple sitemaps like page titles / descr / etc. But I do not think this is the case. Another thread indicated that those settings do not import. Clarification?

4) There is a known issue with canonical urls in AIO that have never worked. I don't know if the latest version of the stand alone AIO fixes these or not but I've noticed they haven't worked in AIO + sitemap for a while and this alone is enough reason for me to want to move over to the new WPMU DEV SEO plugin.

Thanks for any thoughts / corrections / input / clarifications! It seems a bit confusing for there to be 2 significant SEO plugins available that do roughly the same thing (though one does more) without any guidance on the Plugin pages themselves. I totally understand that you need to support all the current installs our there and keep them compatible with the latest ver of WP, but it would be great for new installs or people like me (refreshing things) to know from the AIO + sitemap plugin page: "This is primarily for legacy support. We recommend using our more comprehensive SEO plugin here that covers the same functionality and more!" and on the WPMU DEV SEO page: "This is our most comprehensive and complete SEO plugin ever... this is the one we recommend for new installs / upgrades...." Something like that.

well, let me add this: I know it has been taken out from the latest versions but I just kept my modded AIO version from the latest version here that contained it.

It works just fine for me: http://zice.ro at least I haven't been able to detect any problems...

I do really dislike the new version: it seems to fancy, wizards and the like, all I want is a simple plugin working in the back end, invisible for the user creating meta descriptions and keywords and canonical links but offering him the opportunity to modify those in the write screen.

all this seems to be done by the old AIO mod I got from here. Of course, not being maintained any longer that means it will not work for custom post types and other things that were introduced later...

I totally understand @Ovidiu. Have you tried the new one yet? I think you'll be surprised. Personally I think the "Wizard" terminology in this context is both confusing and inaccurate. Usually a "Wizard" implies that you have to go through it to set something up. Not the case with the new plugin. The "Wizard" is nothing more than the "Global Settings" and all the defaults work identically to the old one (and better).

Not trying to convince you - I'm a big fan of "if it ain't broke don't fix it." But I just want to make sure that no one else runs into the same confusion.

This works identically / better than the old plugin with a simple install - no config changes / wizard mucking around necessary.

There's only 1 thing that everyone might consider changing depending on what level they want to have access to the post/page level SEO meta fields - the setting for access level (single drop-down on the post/page global settings.

Other than that if you're updating from the old you also need to comment out / delete the line you added to your .htaccess file when you installed the first one.

Other than that, painless. Support for custom post types and custom taxonomies is seamless and it automatically picks up all of them and lets you set the default macros for what should render.

Anyway, if you're happy don't touch it. But I'd hate to make that decision myself on incomplete info, so I hope this helps.

thanks Andrew.
you almost sold it to me as opposed to the product page itself! Although I have to admit I was simply to lazy to ask all related questions :slight_frown: so maybe I'll give it a go here:

I.e. the description says: Choose which user roles you would like to have access to SEO metabox settings. yeah ,what user levels do I chose? I think thats up to the blog owner to decide if only admins can do this or maybe he has created some editors that he would like to have the ability to change them too, how would I know?

Besides talking about access, what about access to seomoz? do I only need to connect as site admin or does every admin who wants to use it have to sign up for a free account?

what about the automatic linking? globally configured? separate configuration per blog? who has access? can I disable it on the main blog and leave the choice open for blogs?

seriously, I didn't have the energy to test. So I read the description, checked the screen shots and stayed with the old one. To test I'd have to remove the AIO and sitemap plugin from mu-plugins and wp-content where the sitemap part resides, edit my .htaccess, import, configure and then find out I don't like it?

BTW: talking about SEO, I recently read some drastically opposed theories about no-index and no-follow:

let me quote:

So what happens when you have a page with “ten PageRank points” and ten outgoing links, and five of those links are nofollowed? Let’s leave aside the decay factor to focus on the core part of the question. Originally, the five links without nofollow would have flowed two points of PageRank each (in essence, the nofollowed links didn’t count toward the denominator when dividing PageRank by the outdegree of the page). More than a year ago, Google changed how the PageRank flows so that the five links without nofollow would flow one point of PageRank each.

so basically, instead of no-following link, i.e. to category view you just give the category view a canonical URL of your homepage, thus telling google you don't want that page indexed and forwarding your pagerank to your homepage :slight_smile:

Great questions. We're in more of a federated situation where we dictate a lot about our network - so some of the implications you raise are not really a concern for me, but certainly valid for you.

Just started playing with it, so some of this is assumption and someone please jump in and correct me if I'm wrong. A basic difference about how the plugin will work depends on if it's network activated or activated per blog. So I'll come back to that a bunch.

what user levels do I chose? I think thats up to the blog owner to decide if only admins can do this or maybe he has created some editors that he would like to have the ability to change them too, how would I know?

I think if you network activate it (like I did) this is a global setting only and sets the minimum level one must have to see these post/page settings in any blog in the network. Setting to editor or author would ensure that any user who has permissions to create / edit posts / pages on any blog would also have those SEO fields. Blog activating it would probably allow individual blog admins to set this for their own site independently of other sites.

Besides talking about access, what about access to seomoz? do I only need to connect as site admin or does every admin who wants to use it have to sign up for a free account?

Looks like if you network activate you only need a single account and individual post/page stats are available per post/page on any blog (has a separate drop-down in global settings to determine what level sees this). Drawback to this is that it only pulls 1 site of site (domain) stats.... We mask a lot of our site domains so it would be cool to have per-site stats / settings even in the network activated scenario. I'm assuming individual site activations would require each site admin to have their own API key for SEOmoz.

what about the automatic linking? globally configured? separate configuration per blog? who has access? can I disable it on the main blog and leave the choice open for blogs?

Assuming global config for network activated, individual configs for individual activations. Currently I am not running any Auto Linking but am looking forward to thinking that one through and firing it up.

Totally understand the testing thing! Never fun. I have a dev / test environment with duplicate data of the live environment, so it is fairly quick and easy for me to test without messing with our live network. Just verified quickly that at least in our environment nothing broke and the minimum functionality we got from the old one all still worked.

whats your take on that?

Thanks for the link. I love digging into this stuff. Maybe I'm missing something and that guy is totally right, but the quote from "google" does not support his logic at all. (I still use the Robots Meta plugin to globally nofollow category links that appear on all pages, and outbound links, etc.). I would love to hear someone else's interpretation too.

My take is that quote is talking about pagerank flow on OUTBOUND links that are NOT nofollow in which case the pagerank flows TO the target. The quote seems to indicate that the NON-nofollow penalty against a current page was reduced by half so that target pages for OUTBOUND links are not passing through as much pagerank as they used to. This seems to me to have no effect on nofollow links which were and still are out of the equation. Maybe I read that totally wrong. Anyone else? Just seems like the conclusions he's drawn are not supported by that quote and furthermore actually defy common sense / logic.

If this is a valid concern and his conclusions are correct, what are the chances that something like this can be factored into the WPMU DEV SEO plugin?

all I want is a simple plugin working in the back end, invisible for the user creating meta descriptions and keywords and canonical links but offering him the opportunity to modify those in the write screen.

so I guess I would need a plugin that I network activate. this is what AIO currently does for me. all the other fancy stuff, I would need to be able to decide how much control end users = admins n their own blog get over them and be able to delegate questions like: what user role has access to change the SEO stuff on the write page? to them while ensuring there is a reasonable global default set as most of my users are not very advanced.

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